Anthony J.P. Kenny | Britannica

Anthony J.P. Kenny

Contributor

Website : Anthony Kenny's Gifford Lectures

BIOGRAPHY

Sir Anthony Kenny has been Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, Chairman of the Board of the British Library, and President of the British Academy. He is a much acclaimed expert in classical philosophy and has a keen interest in the nature of human action and freewill.

He has written Wittgenstein (1973), The Oxford History of Western Philosophy (1994), What I Believe (2006), and A New History of Philosophy (2012), among many other books.

Primary Contributions (1)

Aristotle

Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Classical antiquity and Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic…

Publications (3)

A New History of Western Philosophy (August 2012)

By Anthony Kenny

This book is no less than a guide to the whole of Western philosophy—the ideas that have undergirded our civilization for two-and-a-half thousand years. Anthony Kenny tells the story of philosophy from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment into the modern world. He introduces us to the great thinkers and their ideas, starting with Plato, Aristotle, and the other founders of Western thought. In the second part of the book he takes us through a thousand years of medieval philosophy,...

What I Believe (May 2007)

By Anthony Kenny

Anthony Kenny is one of the leading philosophers of the post war years. In this brilliant new book, Kenny writes honestly about his own struggles with belief, and how he now sees himself as neither a theist or an atheist. His intellectual honesty will touch the hearts and minds of countless people. Kenny prowls at the frontiers of theology and philosophy and so commands interest from a very wide spectrum of readers - those who believe and those who find it hard to do so. In this respect his position...

Wittgenstein (2006)

By Anthony Kenny

First published in 1973, Sir Anthony Kenny’s classic introduction to Wittgenstein was widely praised for offering a lucid and historically informed account of the philosopher’s core concerns.

Kenny's study is also remarkable for demonstrating the continuity between Wittgenstein’s early and late writings. Focusing on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind and language, Kenny closely examines the works of the middle years. He exposes apparent conflicts and then goes on to reconcile them, providing...